Infinity wrapped in lightning
by smaragdbird
Summary: I was overlooked, just as you." Lucifer/Castiel slash
1. Infinity Wrapped in Lightning

Castiel woke up when warmth filled him. He gasped and tried to sit up and warm hands supported him.

'Slowly, brother.' Castiel knew that voice.

'Lucifer.' He said and faced his brother: 'What did you do? Where are Dean and Sam?'

'I believe they're out to get breakfast. I hope Dean brings you one of those pies they have here. Sam's salads always taste a bit too bland for my liking.'

'How did you find us?'

'I heard you screaming in pain through time and space.' Lucifer answered: 'You hurt yourself so much for my brother's vessel but you're the only other angel rebelling against Heaven. You're the only one I can still hear.'

'Is that's why you healed me?'

'It's funny that I didn't notice you before my exile.'

'I was born after your fall.' Castiel told him.

'Ah, that explains a lot.' Lucifer smiled: 'I know you won't like to hear this but you remind me of myself.'

'How's that?'

'I was overlooked, just as you.' Lucifer tried to touch Castiel but he flinched away.

'Do you really think that I would hurt you?' Lucifer asked disappointedly.

'Yes, you would.' Castiel replied without hesitation.

'But then why would I have healed you first? I don't want your death.'

'You want the death of everything.'

'No, no. I just want our Father to see that it was wrong to cast me out. Nothing more.'

'And you think the destruction of his creation will achieve that?' There was a hint of disbelief in Castiel's voice.

'Our Father imprisoned me in Hell. You saw it Castiel, you saw what it did to Dean. Do you think God would have done that if it had been Michael who rebelled?' The bitterness was plain to hear in Lucifer's words. He looked so bitter and sad and broken that Castiel felt sympathy for his brother.

'He gave them free will and watched them tear themselves and his whole creation apart, but when we do this we're cast out.' Lucifer continued.

'He created them in his image not us.' Castiel reminded Lucifer. The devil looked up in Castiel's eyes but said nothing. They were silent for a few minutes until Lucifer asked:

'Will you fly with me brother?'

'Where?' Castiel asked distrustfully back. Lucifer shrugged:

'It doesn't matter. I just wish to see your true form. Just once.'

'Why?'

'I haven't seen another angel in aeons. And even confined to this body I can see that you are beautiful, Castiel.' Lucifer held out his hand: 'You can see it as retribution for the healing if that makes it easier for you.'

Castiel took Lucifer's hand.

The flight of an angel was hard if not impossible to describe in human words. How could a language describe something that humans could never experience?

But if one tried it would be mostly a list of adjectives and nouns and verbs.

If one tried it would look like this:

space and stars bend between planets

skies underneath water and suns falling like diamond rains

infinity wrapped in lightening on a child's hand

falling upwards

light sounding like thunder

taste of colours

smell of music

running down barefooted a grassy green hill under a yellow sun and a blue sky while stretching out your arms, laugh, and believe you can fly

'I knew you were beautiful, brother.' There was something like awe in Lucifer's voice when it was Castiel who could not speak after he had seen with his own eyes the true form of his Father's first star.

Lucifer's hand lay tenderly on Castiel's cheek but this time the angel did not move away from the touch.

'Thank you, brother.' Lucifer said and kissed him. It was such a human gesture and such a transcendental one at once.

When Dean opened the door to the motel room Lucifer was gone.


	2. Hell's Light and Heaven's Fire

"Castiel." Lucifer always uses his full name while everyone else calls him 'Cas' by now. On some days it feels like Castiel and Cas are two different people. Castiel was the dutiful angel and Cas is the hunted rebel. Lucifer reminds him that he's still the same person just more of himself than before.

"Why do you stay here, brother?" Sam and Dean are talking to a witness and Castiel waits with the Impala around the corner. In case they need backup like with the girl who hid a wendigo in her basement last week.

"You could come with me." Lucifer offers and not for the first time.

"You wouldn't understand why I'm staying." Castiel tells him. Lucifer holds his gaze for a moment, then he looks away:

"No." He agrees: "I probably wouldn't."

"You wouldn't gain anything by my help." Castiel tells him.

"I would enjoy your company." Lucifer argues: "After being alone for so many aeons your presence is...refreshing."

"Then you should go. I don't want to help you in any way."

"You already helped me the first time you flew with me." Lucifer tells him: "And you've never hidden yourself from angels like you did with Sam and Dean."

"What are you implying?" Castiel asks harshly.

"That you crave my company as much as I crave yours." Lucifer smiles gently. As if wanting to be with him isn't anything bad.

"You're wrong." Castiel says and his voice leaves no room for doubt. He still has conviction if he has barely anything else left.

"Am I?" Lucifer asks simply.

"Yes."

They're silent for a few moments until Lucifer begins again:

"Your beauty is fading so fast, Castiel. Soon you will be like them." And Lucifer sounds like it pains him, that he will lose Castiel to humanity.

"I chose my own fate." But Lucifer can hear the uncertainty because like every other angel except Anna Castiel has no idea what it means to be human. Demons may be monsters but angels are inhuman.

"Let me help you brother," Lucifer pleaded.

"Why would you help me?" Castiel asked suspiciously.

"Because you're the closest to Heaven that I'll ever be again." Lucifer laid his hands on both sides of Castiel's face and kissed him.

For a moment pure grace ran through Castiel's body, more powerful than his grace had ever been. He could feel his wings moving in the wild hope to fly from one end of the universe to the other. From the beginning of time to the end.

Then Lucifer breaks the kiss and Castiel finds himself back in his tightly restricted vessel, bound by his fading powers.

"Please, brother. Please don't make me kill you." Lucifer pleads and he sounds so sincerely and honest that it pains Castiel to listen to him.

"Please don't." He repeats before he takes flight as Dean and Sam come around the corner.

/

Castiel's love for Dean was the reason he fell and while his faith in Dean wavered from time to time his love never did.

But in the end Dean wasn't and would never be an angel, Lucifer was. Even as fallen as he was he remembered Heaven as well as Castiel remembered Hell's flames. And he was the only Angel who didn't want to kill Castiel on sight.

What Dean never fully understood because to him Castiel looked like a man when he wasn't even human was that angels were fundamentally different from humans. Angels were born on the inside of stars with no bodies the human mind could even begin to understand like no angel who hadn't walked the Earth could comprehend time and space because they didn't exist for them.

Lucifer understood him. Understood the limitations Castiel experienced for the first time, understood the immense loneliness of being the only angel.

And all Lucifer ever asked for was for them to fly together. They had no illusions about each other. To achieve their goal one of them would have to die but neither was Lucifer Michael. He wouldn't kill Castiel if he could avoid it. Castiel was the last trace of Heaven Lucifer could hold on to.

/

Lucifer had been young when he had been exiled from Heaven. Not that he had thought of himself as young back then because he was one of the oldest beings in creation but looking back he had been young.

Still he had been old enough to be gone by the time Castiel had been born.

Lucifer wondered how he had looked when he had still been an angel in the garrison and not hurling himself down for this human. But from what Lucifer could still see Castiel must have been beautiful. No, he still was beautiful. Back then he must have been pure and untarnished and glorious.

"I think they should have named you 'The most beautiful'." Lucifer whispered into the naked skin of Castiel's spine. Here on Earth in their vessels they can't manifest their wings but a hint, a shadow lingers between Castiel's shoulder blades.

Lucifer felt this frightening intensive possessiveness when he was with Castiel. First he had tried to explain it as being the only two angels on Earth but that couldn't be enough. That didn't justify why he wanted to send Dean Winchester back to Alastair for making Castiel fall.

During the sweet, short moments the carnal pleasure between their vessels cold give him Lucifer wondered if he would have ever left home if he had been old enough to meet Castiel before his fall.

/

"What do you want?" Castiel demanded to know when Lucifer turned up again and did nothing but stare at Castiel.

"I think we were born inside the same star." Lucifer told him, ever since their flight Lucifer's eyes were filled with awe and affection whenever he looked at Castiel.

"I still believe that we are similar."

"You and I rebelled for very different reasons." Castiel reminded him sharply.

"Still, your defiance, your doubt, your beauty...you're more beautiful than Michael." Lucifer didn't try to touch him but his expression made clear that he yearned to see Castiel again in his true form.

"I think I was the inspiration when our Father created you."

"You can't say such things."

"Why not?" Lucifer looked genuinely puzzled.

"Because it would mean that our Father always knew that I would fall."

"But you fell for such noble reasons." Lucifer replied sarcastically.

"You know nothing of the reason I fell. You know nothing of the reason I died."

"Don't be pretentious with me, Castiel. I know you fell for one human. That doesn't make you better than me."

This time he did reach out to touch Castiel.

"Don't do this to yourself." He pleaded: "Don't become one of them. I don't want to kill you."

"You will always have to kill me before you win." Castiel told him seriously.

"I know." Lucifer looked down, his face full of pain: "But I really wish there would be another way."


	3. Fix the Sky a Little

It's like a bad romance, at least that's what Dean would call it.

Firstly Lucifer is his brother; sure a brother he has never seen before he fell from Heaven and Lucifer rose from Hell but the point still stands: Lucifer is his brother.

Secondly beyond both of them being fallen angels they have nothing in common. Lucifer doesn't see the worth Castiel has discovered in humans. They never agree on anything and despite his contempt for them Lucifer knows more about humans and their culture than Castiel and if it weren't for the Apocalypse Castiel often catches himself thinking that Lucifer and Dean would get along splendidly.

Thirdly they're enemies. There is no way around that either; Lucifer wants to destroy the world, wants to annihilate humanity and Castiel has sworn to prevent that. He actively works with Sam and Dean on a way to kill Lucifer or at least to stop him permanently. Yet, whenever Lucifer calls to him Castiel follows; follows to obscure corners of the world far away from Sam and Dean, far away from any human being.

The presence of another angel is different than the presence of a human. Castiel appreciates Dean's and Sam's friendship but they are not and never will be angels. An angel's grace is a piece of Heaven, a part of Paradise and when they meet Lucifer and Castiel find comfort in basking in each other's grace remains.

/

This time it's different. Castiel knows as soon as he steps into the small church on Aruba. It's the 2nd February, Candle mass and the whole church is lit with hundreds, maybe a thousand candles. Lucifer kneels in front of the altar and in the soft, warm firelight which hides his wounds, Castiel can see the most beautiful angel his father ever created shining through the vessel that is slowly falling apart from the inside.

"They have never seen him," Lucifer says softly: "And yet they still believe." He rises to his feet and turns around to Castiel: "Just like you."

"Is there a point why you have called me here?" Castiel asks impatiently.

"Of course there is." Lucifer answers calmly.

Castiel tilts his head, waiting for him to continue.

"This is the last time we will see each other like this. You're becoming more human every day and the smell sickens me."

"I understand." Castiel says almost dismissively which makes Lucifer look at him curiously:

"You don't mind?"

"I mind, I just don't care."

"What a curious thing you are."

"You said that before." Lucifer shrugs and crosses the distance between them. The smell of Hell is still strong around him, stronger than it is on Dean but that is to be expected.

"I thought for tonight we could..." Lucifer stands very close and raises a hand to lie against Castiel's cheek. It's a strange gesture because they've never touched before and Lucifer looks unusually vulnerable and scared when he does. Castiel knows what he wants; he spent enough time around Dean.

"We are not humans." He reminds Lucifer.

"No," Lucifer amends: "Not yet in your case."

"We are brothers."

"Are we?" Lucifer leans his forehead against Castiel's and whispers: "You are the most beautiful angel I've ever seen, a rare, exceptional gem. I would not have left Heaven without you had you been born before my Punishment."

These words, these compliments are new for Castiel. He has never been exposed to such praise before. Tilting his head to touch his lips to Lucifer's is only a tiny movement but it feels like a momentous occasion.

It feels like the end of the world.

And in the middle of a thousand and one candles burning for their absent father sin is heaped on sin. They don't speak another word and they don't need to. They both know that this is the only time, that they may never be able to even look at each other after this.

They also know that they would be a wasteland without it.


End file.
